The bear handler, Joel Rosenthal, runs a wildlife rehab center called Point of View Farm, Inc. He'd been trying to track down the lonely cub in order to take him to his facility and save him.

As it turns out, Barkley had found the cub just in the nick of time.

Before Rosenthal had the chance to sedate him, the cub's paws gave out from under him while trying to cross the river. Too exhausted to even lift his head from the water, the cub was now beginning to drown.

With the cub drifting away downstream, his death seemingly imminent, Barkley leapt into action.

"I saw his head go down underwater, and that’s when I made the instinctive decision to run after the bear," he said. "My mind was so solely thinking of getting to that bear as fast as I could that I didn’t think about the risks."

Barkley traversed the slippery rocks at the riverside and jumped into the freezing water — swimming toward the cub before it was too late.

"I got to him pretty quickly, and immediately grabbed the bear by the scruff on the back of his neck," Barkley said.

The young bear is regaining his strength under Rosenthal's watchful care at the rehab center — and, with any luck, will return to the wild in full health in the coming months.

"He is very small and starved, but we believe he will do great," Rosenthal told The Dodo. "He will gain weight and then be placed in another pen with other cubs from last year that lost their mothers to hunters. We hope we can release him this summer."